Titan Robela H20 Cooled Case Review

Titan has long been a name associated with air-coolers, cases and recently water-cooling. While their early stand-alone H20 solutions haven?t been hailed as performance beasts, their innate form seems ripe with potential function. There?s one area where Titan may be as successful as they have been with other products; water-cooled cases. Today we investigate the Robela (TWC A88/AB) water-cooled case.

Introduction

Titan's Robela water-cooled case was set loose on the general public approximately one year ago and has gained favorable reviews since. Robela wasn't designed haphazardly as an ordinary steel case with a compact water-cooling system shoved inside. Titan built the Robela from the ground-up intending this to be a synergistic water-cooling case solution. Robela isn't overly ostentatious and its streamlined design disguises the water-cooling hardware housed entirely in the side-panel. The radiator only protrudes a few centimeters from the side-panel and if it weren't for the illuminated fill port, those not familiar with H20-cooling may not recognize this as a water-cooled case.

Insofar as press on Robela what seems to be a re-occurring theme among Reviewers are references made about the weight of the case and the inability to drag the case to LAN Parties. At 570 x 204 x 455mm Robela is clearly a Tower Case and at approximately 20-kilograms fully loaded, it's obviously not intended as a LAN solution. Criticizing the Roberla for its weight is analogous to criticizing your double-door refrigerator/freezer because you can't bring it along to your friend’s house packed with Beer. Titan addressed the weight issue by including sturdy highly polished steel carrying handles. If you’re truly concerned about LAN Parties, host one, you won't have to move your refrigerator either.

From the front the Robela (TWC-A88/AB) features a fairly thick aluminum faceplate in which the LED-display is housed. The LED displays:

Fluid-level (Low/High)

Noise-level (Low/High)

Fan speeds (Fan 1/ Fan 2)

CPU-temp (Low/High)

Pump status.

The panel also allows adjustments for several of the alarm sensors including; CPU-temp and fan speeds. Automated alarms include; pump failure and fluid-level. I'll delve into the automated alarm sensors and their locations later in the review.

Robela was intended to cool processors built on the Socket 939/940/754 or Pentium 775/478 Sockets and "most VGA cards from ATI and NVIDIA." While this might seem like a logistics’ nightmare, I must applaud Titan for including and organizing every piece of required installation hardware into numbered bags. The instruction manual is a clear step-by-step guide which definitely qualifies Robela as the ideal choice for first time H20 users.

The case is designed for tool-less installation although the argument could be made tensioned-locking slide rails designed to mount Optical and HDD's which use pins instead of screws will allow vibration. The pins did fit snuggly and hopefully won't allow too much play.

Fortunately PCI slot locking mechanisms are a bit more stalwart; of course graphic cards aren't built around motor driven disc drives. There are going to be trade-offs wherever tool-less systems are used until a better mousetrap has been built. Those concerns addressed, Titan's solution looks to be an improvement over other efforts I've seen and gave me no problem.

Unfortunately the primary HDD rack at the very bottom, which accommodates tool-less HDD locking rails, faces outward toward the side-panel. This effectively leaves very little room for plugging in the power and SATAN cables. The absence of room encroaches on the cables so their kinked at a 90-degree angle which is problematic in itself, but for those whom are learning the SATA cable's Achilles’ Heel are its loose connectors, this becomes a nightmare. For the longest time I thought my HDD was failing when it was the SATA cables which would dislodge or simply shift from the slightest movement, yet appear to be fine.

Located just to the left of the tool-less HDD rack Titan has placed a small PCB panel from which power and sensor connections are routed to the LED at the front of the case and the water-cooling system on the side-panel. Included on the PCB is a small SPL sensor which give a "Noise" level reading on the display. Removing the side-panel you have to be careful not to damage the wiring which is on a "short leash."

Once the system is installed including water-cooling hoses, removing the side-panel becomes even more difficult. Accessing hardware must be done very carefully; I almost pulled the GPU cooler and the card right along with it by forgetting about the hose length several times. This is the view looking down into the case once the panel is opened.

Finally we see there's adequate room within the case once the heart of the system is installed. Titan's location of the water-cooling hardware on the side-panel is what originally piqued my interest for this case. This is a true water-cooling case, not a hodge-podge of systems.